No Other Land: A hideous assault on Israel's reality  

The documentary No Other Land, directed by Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor, has been hailed as a cinematic triumph, clinching the 2025 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. For many Israelis, however, it is a gut-wrenching provocation—a film that flattens a complex conflict into a cartoonish vilification of Israel, ignoring the visceral realities that define our existence. As an Israeli viewer, I cannot watch it without thinking of my friend’s child, murdered by a Hamas RPG on November 29th last year.

In fact on October 6, 2023, Gaza thrived as a functioning society—flush with resources, infrastructure, and potential—yet it still harbored a terror apparatus that snuffed out innocent Jewish lives. This film, lauded by the world, exemplifies a maddening trend: the reflexive pouncing on Israel and Jews as the easy villains, while the truth of our lived experience is buried under a landslide of selective outrage.

No Other Land immerses us in the demolition of Masafer Yatta, a remote West Bank enclave, with unrelenting immediacy. Adra’s lens captures homes crumbling under bulldozers, soldiers enforcing orders, and Palestinians clinging to their land—a tableau of despair that is undeniably affecting. The collaboration between Adra, a Palestinian activist, and Abraham, an Israeli journalist, is framed as a noble bridge across a divide, their personal rapport a flicker of hope amid the chaos. Yet, this very premise collapses under scrutiny. The film’s narrative is not a bridge but a battering ram, wielded to bludgeon Israel into a faceless oppressor, devoid of context or humanity. It is a work of artful propaganda that thrives on omission—omission of the security imperatives that drive Israel’s actions, omission of the thriving Gaza that existed before its Hamas rulers unleashed hell on October 7, and omission of the blood on their hands, like that of my friend’s child.

Consider Gaza before that fateful October day in 2023. It was not the desolate wasteland No Other Land implies of Palestinian life under Israeli control. Gaza boasted a bustling economy, modern infrastructure—hospitals, schools, a university—and a coastline that could have rivaled any Mediterranean gem. Billions in international aid poured in, dwarfing support for many developing nations. The Gaza airport, though dormant since Israel’s 2001 bombing (a response to terror threats), symbolized a past where autonomy was possible.

Hamas, however, chose rockets over prosperity, tunnels over trade. On October 6, Gaza functioned incredibly well—well enough to sustain a sophisticated terror network that launched RPGs at Israeli children. No Other Land erases this reality, presenting a Palestine of perpetual victimhood and an Israel of inexplicable cruelty, as if the Jewish state wakes each day plotting misery rather than survival.

The film’s intellectual dishonesty lies in its refusal to engage with Israel’s side of the ledger. Masafer Yatta’s designation as a military training zone—a decision rooted in decades-old land disputes and security needs—is reduced to an act of sadism, with no mention of the hundreds of terrorist attacks that have emanated from the West Bank, nor the strategic necessity of maintaining control in a region where peace has been a mirage. Israeli soldiers and settlers are dehumanized—silhouetted figures in helmets, stripped of individuality or motive—while Palestinian agency is confined to noble suffering.

Where is the acknowledgment of Hamas’s militarization of civilian spaces, or the rockets that rained on Sderot long before October 7? Where is the voice of Israelis like my friend, whose child’s laughter was silenced by an RPG fired from a Gaza that the world now romanticizes as helpless?

This one-sidedness is not mere oversight; it is a choice. Abraham’s presence as the token “good Israeli” does little to balance the scales—he is a dissenter, unrepresentative of the mainstream Israeli experience, yet showcased to deflect accusations of bias. The film sidesteps the diversity of Israeli society—leftists who decry occupation, hawks who prioritize security, and ordinary families who mourn losses like my friend’s—opting instead for a monolithic portrayal of aggression.

Contrast this with documentaries like The Law in These Parts (2011), which probes the moral quandary of Israel’s legal system in the territories, or even Waltz with Bashir (2008), which dares to wrestle with Israeli guilt and trauma. No Other Land offers no such introspection, preferring accusation over analysis.

Globally, the film’s reception underscores a sickening double standard. Its Oscar win and glowing reviews—Variety called it “a howl of anguish”—fuel a narrative where Israel is the perennial aggressor, Jews the convenient scapegoats for a world eager to absolve others’ sins. Yet, when Hamas RPGs murder children, when Gaza’s pre-October 6 vitality is twisted into a launchpad for terror, the world shrugs. No Other Land does not challenge this hypocrisy; it amplifies it, wrapping its polemic in the veneer of artistry. Its makers call it “resistance to Apartheid,” a loaded term that ignores the apartheid of intent in Hamas’s charter, which seeks Israel’s annihilation. Meanwhile, the film’s focus on Masafer Yatta as a symbol of Palestinian woe glosses over Gaza’s complexities, where governance failures and militancy—not just Israeli policies—shape the suffering.

Even the name 'No Other Land' was stolen from us. In Israel, we say 'Ein li Eretz Acheret', we have no other land. Because we don't. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look back a few decades and see the obvious fact, that when Israel didn't exist, the world was free to massacre and slaughter as many Jews as it wanted to, however it wanted to. And it did, gleefully.

But it's suddenly the Pleastinians who have 'no other land'. What utter vile nonsense. What a dangerous and despicable lie. If they acted like normal people, and stopped teaching babies about Jew hatred and murder, maybe other countries would take them in. But they don't.

So spare me your crocodile tears. I'm over it. We all are.

Artistically, No Other Land is gripping but shallow. Its raw footage compels, yet its lack of self-reflection—on the filmmakers’ biases, on the limits of their lens—renders it a missed opportunity. Adra and Abraham could have explored their own entanglement in this conflict, but they don’t. The result is a documentary that preaches to the choir, just another boring echo chamber for Jew haters. For Israelis, it is a slap in the face—a reminder that our losses, our fears, our struggle to exist are footnotes in a global script that casts us as the villain.

This film is not truth; it is a mirror for those who already despise us. It offers only condemnation—and leaves us, the bereaved, to shout into the void. The Jews who helped top create it should hang their heads in shame, and deep down, their 'heroic' Palestinian co-creators despise them. And after that vicious inciting movie, so do we.